4 Pop Culture Details You Never Even Knew Had Explanations

2

A Video Game Character’s Blood Type Told You All About Them

Capcom

Remember back in the good old days, when video games came with a manual, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth looking for the last green valley? If you do recall those grim times, back when human beings had to reap information from paper like primitive savages, you might recall the odd choice to include the blood types of characters in said manuals.

CapcomActually, we’re more concerned about his severe jaundice.

W-why? To help us fantasize about their inevitable blood transfusions after the “Game Over” screen?

Height, weight, and age are all the basic stats we need to relate to our characters, as well as to set unrealistic body standards for young street fighters everywhere. So what’s the deal with the blood types? They actually make perfect sense … to Japanese culture.

CapcomMeaning he made that necklace out of the skulls of his enemies with some craft supplies he had laying around.

By including blood types, the player had at least some indicator of the character’s personality, back in an age where developers had about six pixels to convey every possible emotion.

1

The Count From

Sesame Street

Is Based On Ancient Vampire Lore

Sesame Workshop/PBS

Big Bird, Elmo, Kermit, Bert, Ernie, and a bloodsucking parasite that lives eternally by stealing the lives of its victims. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong …

Have you ever wondered why Sesame Street chose to make their number-obsessed character a vampire? Of course you haven’t: They clearly modeled Count Von Count on Count Dracula because it’s a fun little play on words. He’s a Count who loves to count!

But wait: Preschoolers are just as likely to know the Count of Monte Cristo as they are to know Count Dracula, so why choose the vampire? After all, Big Bird is clearly a mad scientist’s experiment gone wrong — a freak struggling to prove his humanity — but they didn’t model him after Frankenstein’s monster.

Sesame Workshop/PBSThough Snuffleupagus was inspired by the failed Ripley clones.

See, vampires were believed to be obsessed with numbers, and they couldn’t help but count any group of small objects you tossed in their path. Today, we would call behavior like this OCD, but in medieval Eastern Europe, they just called you an unholy monster of the night, staked you, and were done with it.

The Count’s counting compulsion now makes complete sense. Honestly, the denizens of Sesame Street constantly throwing numbers at him is probably the only thing staving off a horrific murder spree.